Jessica Mookherjee's Poet Blog

Hectic Subculture

What does it all mean? I think it means consumptive, the agitation felt by illness. We think it means busy or active. The word is flushed with a persistent fever.

I have been hectic. Britain has been hectic. We have become disordered. We have Brexit-ed.

Broken it.

Leave or Remain? There could never be a nuanced argument over yes or no. Normal distributions – the standard deviations on the normal curve – that take into account the maths of the middle, have been chopped. We are chopped down the middle.

Have you been forcibly radicalised by a Brefferendum? I’m not surprised we felt ill, hectic and unable to function. As people posted – get over it, it’s done now, triumphalism and fear all poured out. I looked for people with union jack flags on their face book profiles. I wanted to know why they felt so strongly about something I barely noticed.

“Do you really hate ALL muslims?” I asked one man – as he posted me a picture of him and a pretty young black woman “see I’m no racist” he told me. I never said he was. Bruv.

As I slid through twelve emotions a day and felt hectic and on high alert, I watched the ‘Roman Empire’ crumble. I learned an Indian company owns Jaguar/ Range Rover – did you know that? I considered moving to Canada.

As the thunder, lightning and rain poured down that night I felt strangely exhilarated. I felt I was in the middle of history. I called a friend and suggested we go and listen to Slavoj Zizek talk at the South Bank and catch the end of the “Stay” March.

Radical Subculture

Zizek talks about masks. We all know everyone is corrupt – we are never surprised they are lying to us. That a big red bus went round telling us £350 million would be pumped from Europe to the NHS, we shrug – well – what do you expect? And we shrug and say – that’s reality. So we buy into that being democracy – because it keeps the electricity on and trains running. And when the mask comes off? When people stop being polite? Perhaps then we can talk. Should we have a proper fight about some raw emotions and explode a few taboos?

I have never thought the death penalty was the way to go. If we had a referendum on it I wonder what would happen. I have only ever once considered the death penalty as an option – and then only for a few hours. It was in 2007 when a young gothic emo girl called Sophie Lancaster was brutally murdered by some thick kids, kicked to death just for dressing differently.

This feeling affected me so deeply – as for a few hours I was radicalised and I wanted the killers dead. When I returned to a more ‘reasonable’ state of mind – I was deeply troubled by myself. I knew hate was no answer or no justice. Clearly Poet – Simon Armitage was able to dissect my feelings – in his beautiful play and book “Black Roses: Killing of Sophie Lancaster”.